Not a single person on our staff making picks managed to stumble into Lamar Jackson, with some people even getting adorable and going with Trevor Lawrence and Justin Herbert. Unfortunately for me, not only did I have Josh Allen as my actual pick, but in this space I debated between Lawrence and Lamar before landing on the Jaguars quarterback because Lamar’s price got too expensive after he got his contract done. Whoops!
Before we dive into the actual picks, allow me my annual rant on the MVP betting space: it is utterly ridiculous that there are 11 (!) players 20-1 or lower in terms of MVP odds. Do you know what has to happen over the full course of a season to win MVP? The only reason the odds are so shrunk is sportsbooks got torched by Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson in their respective second seasons, when they won MVP with offseason odds in the 75-1 range. The departure of Tom Brady/Peyton Manning/etc doesn’t help matters — there’s a new crop of quarterbacks and there’s a lot more variance here.
We know it will be a quarterback. There have been four non-QB winners since the year 2000. All four — Marshall Faulk (2000), Shaun Alexander (2005), LaDainian Tomlinson (2006) and Adrian Peterson (2012) — were running backs and won at least over a decade ago. Under the new voting process (top five picks from 50 voters, versus just a single vote) instituted in 2022, we’ve seen Justin Jefferson finish fifth and Christian McCaffrey finish third. But neither player received a first-place vote in those years. Don’t bet on non-quarterbacks unless you like setting money on fire.
We also know the quarterback needs to win the division. The Vikings finished second in the NFC North in 2012, but you have to go back to 2008, when a 12-4 Colts team finished second in the AFC South (the Titans went 13-3) and Peyton Manning’s incredible season to find a quarterback who didn’t win his division and still…
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Author : Will Brinson
Publish date : 2024-08-20 13:41:09
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